Today was a wonderful day to be out. After Ben got up from his nap I took him to the water tower playground down the block. There’s a community garden there. Until recently it’s been fenced off from the playground, but the fence was all taken down today, so we spent some time looking at what’s left of the vegetation and flowers there.

I took the G9 along, initially because I’m just trying to get in the habit of taking it with me. Once we were there, though, a lot of macro opportunities presented themselves, so I took them. I haven’t tried to do much macro photography with the Pentax k100d, so I can’t really compare the two cameras, but I was pretty pleased with what I got out of the G9 today. There are a few glitches here and there, but it did a nice job.

One area where it most definitely does better than the Pentax is in its automatic white balance setting. The Pentax always seems to be off. It’s nothing that isn’t easily corrected (telling LightRoom “auto” instead of “as shot” usually handles things just fine), but the G9 gets it closer to right the first time.

On the other hand, this Canon struggles the same as all of them with reds and magentas, which are much more saturated — to the point of being blown out — than the Pentax even dreams. It’s a deficiency that’s also recoverable in LightRoom, but it’s a much more fiddly one. Fixing white balance is your first choice in LightRoom’s develop module. Desaturating the reds and fiddling with their tint is further down the panel.

And the Canon has another problem, which is metering Ben, who is fair skinned in a way that defies easy photography. I always end up having to set the EV down a stop or so when I’m shooting him in daylight. I think the k100d has a little better dynamic range where Ben’s particular complexion is concerned. It’s easier to get something closer to his actual skin tone with the Pentax and a nudge of warming and saturation.

Anyhow, it was a pretty fun set of pictures. The colors were just exploding today, even in the high afternoon sun. By the time we were heading home the sun was much lower and the colors were even more beautiful.